Poll on if you would send your (primary) aged dc back to school on 11/5

[THATscurryfungeBITCH]

Would you be happy to send your primary aged dc back to school on 11th May?

Yes - YABU
No - YANBU

@Buttons44 But NHS staff are getting infected and dying. You must realise of the best plan was for everyone to get it then it would make sense for this to be done with NHS staff in a controlled way? At the moment it is uncontrolled. So give proper PPE the full works to a percentage of staff and let a percentage get ill by giving them no PPE and then return to work.
Of course medics will not agree to no PPE, because they know the safest approach is to to try and not get covid 19 at all. Too many have cared for desperately ill colleagues. Most of those do recover. But who wants to be really ill in hospital?

No, I wouldn't. But I'm a SAHP and I doubt they would fully reopen at that point, so would be keen to keep places for families that need it.

I would. Humans are bad at risk assessment. We are probably in more danger driving but we do that everyday (normally). We aren't in a vulnerable group so yes, I'd put DD back in school. Am hoping that we reopen the schools here after the May half term.

DS is on the shielding list because he is disabled. So probably no but I have not decided yet.

The thing with the vaccine is we always might be one month away from it, so you can't really make decisions on that basis. That situation could go on indefinitely. If we can't create one, and we cannot presume we will, at some point we have to make the decision to deal with this in another way.

I think it’s very apparent that there are significant numbers of glass half empty people out there. Everything is doom, gloom and unknown so must be treated as though it’s certain imminent doom and they believe anyone who thinks differently must have lost their senses. Personally I prefer to live in optimism, after all, if this is the virus that will be the down fall of humanity, flapping about it won’t change that.

Yes, like a shot. No vulnerable people in my household. But then DS and DH are out and about as key workers anyway so it’s not like we are all locked down in our household.

No. I'm 34 weeks' pregnant and I have an almost 10 and 12.5 yo.

Yes, I think the impact on their health and wellbeing of being stuck at home is damaging to be honest. They've got a lovely home bit it's not normal to spend so long in isolation

I feel the same. I'd be happy to send my dc back to school. My dc has minor sn and socialization is really important for her. I am aware children are not immune to covid but for me I feel the benefits of returning to school out weigh the risks. The most dangerous part of my children attending school is the traffic in the mornings imo and that doesn't stop me sending them in.

absolutely not,
until its proven it is safe to send them back they are staying home regardless of the loss of social and financial aspects.

why would you send them back so they could catch the virus and potentially die or pass it to yourselves..

I agree humans are terrible at risk assessment. So the chance of your child getting kidnapped is tiny. The truth is we should give our kids way more freedom. The risks of letting 7 and 8 year olds wander about in their local area unsupervised are very low. But I get told all the time I am BU and that if there is a chance their child could be abducted, how ever low, then it should not happen.
I understand risk. I also understand that for healthy children with zero medical conditions the risk of dying is very low. Although the risk of getting very ill is higher. I also understand that the risk of school staff, especially those with underlying medical conditions dying is higher. And that risk goes up a lot if they are a man, and as they get older. And I understand the risk to families if their infected child transmit the virus. I understand that the risk of a middle aged father dying or of being hospitalised, is much higher. And that risk increases a lot if they have underlying medical conditions such as diabetes or high blood pressure.
I know some are pretty blase about risks. I see when abroad British tourists doing dangerous sports in places with very little health and safety regulation. I remember watching British tourists doing white water rafting in a place where the year before about 5 people were killed and in the ensuing court case it emerged that not only were basic health and safety measures not adhered to, there was no law around it.
So I know some people are prepared to take very high risks with their safety. That is their choice I guess. My choice is that I am 50, a mother of 2 kids, I have many years ahead of me. And I want to live and for my DP and kids to live.

Glass half empty people?
Seriously, it's a pandemic. There's a lot of evidence out there from China and Italy of quite how serious it can get, and we've not peaked yet.
I do have to fight off mild anxiety at the best of times, so admit I am anxious about this, and have to work on keeping things in perspective, but I think with a new disease at the 'no cure' stage it's reasonable to be a bit cautious, especially if you have loved ones who do have underlying health problems.

@alloutoffucks I can't find what you, personally, have said but several people have said, here and elsewhere, that they will not send their children back until there is a vaccine.
I'm just wondering what they would do about other contacts their children have?

Fruitsaladjelly - I feel like you were on the cusp of writing "Project Fear" there. Damn all those worried people holding back the courageous optimistic spirits.

I still don't know why @THATscurryfungeBITCH has asked about May 11th as a start date? Where has that particular date come from?

@alloutoffucks I think you’ve misunderstood my point. I’m saying that, if schools are opened and lockdown is relaxed in September or January, more beds will be taken up with other respiratory illnesses in addition to covid19. Cases of flu and bronchitis will be spread alongside CV in autumn and winter, more so than in summer. It doesn’t matter than in lockdown there are fewer cases of all these respiratory illnesses, because we’re talking about when lockdown is relaxed.

Where I live school attendance is mandatory for 9 years (not like the UK where it's education, but not school, that's mandatory). I'm not sure when our schools will go back - not before 4th May, but it'll be a staged return with not all children going back at once. We're rural but there have been multiple deaths and hundreds of cases in the town where the secondary is, and cases in double figures in the village where the primary is (but there's far more testing done here than in the UK so more cases are known about and contact traced).

I'm a key worker going into work unavoidably, haven't been using childcare - here both parents have to be key workers to be entitled to it, and I wouldn't have wanted to anyway - I see it as a bad idea to extend the web of contacts via school. My children going to school would make me a vector to bring the virus to the vulnerable people I work with, in fact.

Every extra contact increases risk so me being a key worker is almost more of a reason not to send them, because of the increased risk to the people I look after at work.

However if the schools open we would have to.

I'm glad it's been extended from 20 April to 4 May at least.

Yes

i still don't know why @THATscurryfungeBITCH has asked about May 11th as a start date? Where has that particular date come from?

It’s the date announced for schools reopening in France, following a period of increased lockdown measures.

@Fruitsaladjelly So worrying about health and safety and protecting our families is being doom and gloom? You sound like my grandparents who think car seats are a load of health and safety gone mad nonsense and I am just over worrying because I use car seats. Up to you, but blindly optimistic people tend to die younger. There has been research on this. Because they do not take basic safety measures and they tend not to go the Dr with small worrying symptoms.

I am teacher at a secondary school and I would be very concerned about sending my kids back to school.

At the moment we are still open for a handful of children of key workers and 'at risk' children. We can keep them safe, as due to the the small numbers we can enforce social distancing. Having said that, we had to exclude three as they kept ignoring the distancing rules and put the other children at risk.

The problem is that as soon as the schools reopen any attempt to enforce social distancing will be impossible. The classrooms are not physically large enough to keep thirty children two metres apart, and if you think children will comply with social distancing rules during break times you are living on another planet.

It is well know that schools spread viruses like wild fire. When the UK had the Norovirus outbreak our students were dropping like flies despite our best efforts of using hand sanitizers, deep cleaning etc.

What many people seem to be willing to gloss over is that it can be several days before an infected person shows symptom of having the Corona virus, and some people can carry the virus without having any symptoms at all.

Even though most children appear not to be seriously affected by the virus, it does not mean the won't be returning from school with it and passing it to the rest of their families.

At the moment we are providing online education for our students, and in doing so we are protecting the health of our students and their families (including key workers).

If we reopen the schools without at least having a test available to determine who has the Corona virus, the gains we have made by having a lock down over the past few weeks will be lost.

To my mind the sensible course of action (especially since the exams have been cancelled) would be to continue the online education until the Summer holidays at the beginning of July, and then by the start of the new term in September a test for Corona virus will be widely available.

Would they really open schools again two weeks before the may half-term?

www.thesun.co.uk/news/11399062/primary-schools-reopen-may-half-term/

One example

@Tulipstulips Yes if we all went back to normal flu will spread like normal. Personally I think social distancing will be encouraged long after other measures have ended. Flu is less contagious than covid 19, so social distancing alone would reduce transmission of flu.

So Ian Duncan Smith has suggested 11th May (whilst trashing Gavin Williamson for not deciding yet). Not sure I'll rely on IDS as a guide to be honest.

That Sun article is a load of bollocks. The vagueness is outstanding “some ministers”

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